I was six years old when my parents told me that there was a small, dark jewel inside my skull, learning to be me.

Diaspora starts about a thousand years from now. Most of human civilisation has moved inside computers; essentially, a major branch of our descendants consists of conscious software.

I don't have any structured grand plan; I just intend to keep writing about the things that interest me-some of which change, some of which don't.

I was six years old when my parents told me that there was a small, dark jewel inside my skull, learning to be me.

It was almost noon when the plane touched down at the Triad airport on the outskirts of Greensboro. There was a hire car waiting for me; I waved my notepad at the dashboard to transmit my profile, then waited as the seating and controls rearranged themselves slightly, piezoelectric actuators humming. As I started to reverse out of the parking bay, the stereo began a soothing improvisation, flashing up a deadpan title: Music for Leaving Airports 11 June 2008.

On his eighteenth day in the tiger cage, Robert Stoney began to lose hope of emerging unscathed.

If we spend all our time gazing at the wonders ahead without remembering where we're standing right now, we're going to trip and fall flat on our face, over and over again.